My Second Truman Speech Post

[No Elephants]

Truman was doing whistle stop speeches. This was the third one he gave on June 4, the first, a very brief one, having been given in Ohio at noon and a slightly longer one in Wayne, Indiana, at 2:20, only a few minutes earlier.

Historically, Indiana had leaned Republican. In 1940, though, it flat out stopped voting Democratic. The two exceptions since 1940 were LBJ vs. Goldwater and Obama vs. McCain. But, apparently, Harry had not given up on Indiana.

FDR had died April 12, 1945, only a few months after his fourth inauguration. Therefore, Truman can almost be considered to be running for a second term in 1948, even though this was actually Truman's first--and only--campaign for the Presidency.

I think Truman's reference to the 'Both Congress" is a reference to the fact that Repubicans had won control of both houses of Congress in 1946 midterms, but I am not sure. The 1948 election saw Truman win by a landlside and a flip in Congress, back to Democratic.




June 4, 1948

GARY, INDIANA (2:40 p.m.)


Mr. Mayor, Congressman Madden:

It is a pleasure to me, I assure you, to have had the privilege of stopping here this afternoon and to have had the privilege of meeting this most intelligent audience, as Mr. Madden said. I appreciate that privilege. I wish I had the time to look at some of the great industries you have in this fast growing community. I am told that this is the youngest town in America over a hundred thousand inhabitants. That is quite a record. You have done some great things here in this town. I made some investigations here during the war, and the. plants in this city made a magnificent contribution to that war effort.

Everybody was worried and uneasy when the war ceased suddenly on V-J Day--in September--and everybody wondered whether he was going to have a job or not, and everybody wondered whether he was going to have enough to eat, and when he was going to be able to get what he needed to live.

Well, that worry about the job went out the window. The last part of last year we passed the 60-million mark in jobs in this country. At the end of May, in this year, there were 61,800,000 people at work in this country. But that 61,800,000 people at work in this country had another worry. They were very much worried about the cost of living.

Now that cost of living has been skyrocketing ever since July 1946. In July 1946--that is on the 30th of June 1946--the Congress sent me an impossible price control bill, and I vetoed it. Thirty days later they sent me one almost as bad, and I had to take it or none.

I had suggested to the Congress leaving the powers with the President for a gradual release of controls, as production caught up with consumption. They did not see fit to do that. And therefore the price of living--the cost of living has been gradually going up. It made a tremendous jump from August 1946 to January 1947, and it has been steadily rising ever since.

I asked the Congress last November in the message to the special session to restore Federal controls to the President so he could in his discretion hold down the cost of living to the common, everyday man. This 80th Congress has not seen fit to take any action. They have decided that the National Association of Manufacturers and the National Chamber of Commerce of the United States know all about prices and price controls.

Well now, we have price controls and rationing now, just as we have under Government controls, only those price controls are controls so that only the man who has the money is able to get the necessities of life.

Your dollar now in the purchase of food is worth only about 60 cents of what your dollar was in 1946, when the Government was controlling prices in favor of the consumer.

This is a producer's market under which we are living now. The cost of living now is still going up.

The Both Congress, I am afraid will adjourn without doing anything about it. And then we will be faced with a continued rise and rise in the cost of living. It can only go so far under this boom and bust program. I am hoping that when we get a new Congress--and we are going to get one this fall--maybe we'll get one that will work in the interests of the common people and not the interests of the men who have all the money.

Bear that in mind carefully when you decide that you want a new Congress. That is absolutely essential for the welfare of this country, and we need a Congress that believes in the welfare of the Nation as a whole and not in the welfare of special interests.

The welfare of the world is wrapped up in the welfare of the United States. We now, whether we like it or not, are the leaders in the world, and in order to get a lasting peace, the economy of this country must be absolutely sound and solid. I have been preaching that ever since July 1946, and I am going to keep on harping on it as long as I am President of the United States, and if you support me, we will probably get it.

Thank you very much.

NOTE: In the course of his remarks on June 4 the President referred to former Governor Frank J. Lausche, Democratic candidate for Governor of Ohio, Mayor Eugene Swartz of Gary, and Representative Ray J. Madden of Indiana.

http://www.trumanlibrary.org/publicpapers/index.php?pid=1643


Special interests. A plague here from the days of the East India company to the present. And look how much purchasing power the dollar had lost during less than two years, thanks to a government run for the benefit of special interests. Sadly, we no longer have an FDR or a Truman to combat the special interests. Instead, we have both Democrats and Republicans eagerly seeking lobbyists.

Author and Columnist David Sirota has strongly criticized the DLC, whom he claims have sold out to corporate interests. In 1980, the Democratic National Committee (DNC) founded the Democratic Business Council to compete with the Republican National Committee for donations from businesses and corporations.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_Leadership_Council


I had also read somewhere, but cannot remember where, that circa 1980, the DNC sent a memo to its elected officials in D.C. asking them to try to get some of the corporate campaign donations from the lobbyists that the Republicans had been getting.

Coincidentally or not, after 1980, the number of lobbyists in D.C. grew exponentially.

[Enthusiast]

1. He appealed to the people to

make congress do the right thing or vote them out of office. Sounds like a wonderful idea.

[No Elephants]

2. it used to be, when the difference between the two parties was marked.

Voters have been voting people in and out of Congress quite a bit more in the last 20 or 30 years than they did in the decades following Roosevelt's first election.

But, it doesn't help because they all answer to the same lobbyists, more or less.

[Enthusiast]

3. This is why when Democrats gained a majority

in 2006 and again in 2008 many of us felt so completely gutted. Democrats failed to address the core issue of election reform. After the ruse of the 2,000 election it should have been priority number one.

Changing or overturning Citizens United should be the number one issue for congress. Every poll tells us the American people want to do something about the influence of money on elections and the legislative process. Our elected representatives have failed us -- utterly. At least the Democrats could make noise about it. If they made as much of a fuss over Citizens United as Republicans do about the "size of government" we could have resolved the issue by now.

Lobbyists have far less influence when they don't come with suitcases bulging with dollars.

[No Elephants]

4. Ah, yes. The failure to address election reform.

Well, Waxman did hold hearings before they did nothing. So, there's that.


And, as her first move, Pelosi very publicly took impeachment off the table. However, she did promise to "drain the swamp." I thought we's see the House turn into a popcorn machine, throwing out corrupt politicians in all directions. Turned out she meant Rangel?

They could have done so many things between January 2007 and January 2011. Taxes, minimum wage, climate and on and on.

But, they didn't want to.

Good times.

As far as Citizens, though, the only way to overrule that is a Constitutional amendment. No constitutional amendment with any controversy at all attached to it has been adopted since the 1950s. Even the ERA is too controversial and is still kicking around in Constitutional amendment limbo.

So, we're pretty much screwed on that one. And, to be candid, I am not sure putting more Democratic nominees on the court is the answer, at least, not if they are corporatists.

So, there's that, too.